The Database of Latin Dictionaries is a project that has been in development for many years by the Centre ‘Traditio Litterarum Occidentalium’ (CTLO) under the direction of Paul Tombeur. Its purpose is to produce for scholars and students an online database comprising a large number of Latin dictionaries. The database will continue to grow gradually and will comprise three kinds of dictionaries: dictionaries to assist translation from Latin into modern languages, dictionaries providing semantic and etymological explanations in Latin of Latin words and historical Latin dictionaries.

The aim of the database is not only to integrate different types of Latin dictionary, whether modern, medieval or early-modern, but also to build in links between these different tools. Where the dictionaries provide Latin terms and vernacular equivalents or explanations (whether in contemporary or historic forms of English, French or German, say), searches will be possible on both the Latin lemmata and the English, French or German lemmata. This database will provide an unsurpassed tool since all Latin word-forms that appear concretely in texts will have a link to entries in relevant dictionaries and from there the user can go and read the selected dictionary entry.

The Database of Latin Dictionaries will be produced by the same Centre ‘Traditio Litterarum Occidentalium’ (CTLO) which is responsible for the Library of Latin Texts. CTLO continues the former activities in the field of Latin studies of the Cetedoc institute. Cetedoc was founded by the Université Catholique de Louvain at Louvain-la-Neuve and has been developed jointly by Brepols Publishers and the university.

New dictionaries will be added each year. A ‘live link’ to the Library of Latin Texts is available for all institutions subscribing to both online databases.

CONTENTS AND TIMETABLE:

At the moment, three dictionaries are searchable on the database:

• Albert Blaise, Dictionnaire latin-français des auteurs chrétiens.

  This dictionary, which is the only scholarly tool covering the complete Latin Church Fathers covers the period from the earliest Christian writings (the time of Tertullian and the Passio Perpetuae) to the dawn of the Carolingian Renaissance. It comprises classical words used by the Fathers when the words are used in new senses, and new lexical creations. The electronic version includes a harmonisation of the references to works cited, an indication of the century of composition of these works, and corrections (addenda and delenda). This update is based on comparison with published editions. Each entry in the dictionary has been linked to a common lemma (or ‘hyperlemma’) which links the various forms of one word in different dictionaries, and therefore allows cross-checking across the dictionaries envisaged for DLD.

• Firminus Verris Dictionarius / Dictionnaire latin-français de Firmin Le Ver, ed. by B. Merrilees and W. Edwards.

  This major dictionary produced by the Carthusian, Firmin le Ver, drew on several sources, including the thirteenth-century Catholicon by Johannes Balbus of Genoa. The Dictionarius of Firmin Le Ver was produced ca. 1460 and its organisational quality and bilingual character makes it one of the greatest lexical undertakings of the Middle Ages. It is more than just a Latin-French dictionary, since it uses both languages in a complementary fashion to define the Latin lemmata. Moreover, the French that Le Ver uses is impressive and shows him to be a lexical innovator himself and someone willing to create new French terms to give very nuanced meanings in the language. The publication of this dictionary as a database will in one go provide scholars with a Latin – Medieval French dictionary.

• C. du Fresne('du Cange'), Glossarium ad scriptores mediae et infimae latinitatis.

  The entire inputting of the medieval Glossarium of Du Cange – taken from the late-nineteenth-century edition, and including the medieval French glossary and the addenda – has been completed by CTLO and will be searchable during winter 2005-2006. Users will be able to search the entire lexical data gathered by Du Cange and his successors through an index both of Latin words and medieval French words.

In the coming years, more and more dictionaries will be integrated:

• Albert Blaise, Lexicon latinitatis medii aevi praesertim ad res ecclesiasticas investigandas pertinens / Dictionnaire latin-français des auteurs du moyen-âge.

  This dictionary of medieval Latin will also receive a series of addenda and delenda based on a comparison with more recent scholarly editions and resources. The largest task has involved linking Blaise’s lexical notes to textual corpora (particularly the Library of Latin Texts, but also other databases of texts, such as the Monumenta Germaniae Historicae).

• Anonymus Montepessulanensis, Dictionarius / Le Glossaire latin-français du MS Montpellier H236.; Glossarium gallico-latinum / Le Glossaire français-latin du MS Paris lat. 7684, ed. by A. Grondeux, J. Monfrin and B. Merrilees (1998)

  The first-named glossary is an alphabetical Latin wordlist in two parts: the first, general and the second, restricted to verbs. The second glossary, built into the margins of the first is an index in Picard French relating to the previous entries and composed by a different author; in effect it is an inverse Picard-Latin dictonary. The Anonymi Montepessulanensis Dictionarius is based on the Expositiones vocabulorum Biblie of Guilelmus Brito. The Glossarium gallico-latinum from Paris, BnF, MS. Lat.7684 (15th cent.) fits into the tradition of bilingual dictionaries derived from Johannes Balbus’s Catholicon. The French vocabulary found in this small dictionary contains many of its own neologisms and many new lexicographical items.

• Lexicon Totius Latinitatis, by Forcellini, Furlanetto, Corradini and Perin (1771- 1940)

  The DLD will present a fully-searchable version of the entirety of Forcellini’s Lexicon, including the Onomasticon. The edition used is the latest, which includes the numerous addenda of Mgr. Perin and which were published first in 1940. Besides its immense historical importance, this Lexicon remains essential for everything which has not yet appeared in the new Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (the letters N, P [part], and Q to Z, and the Onomasticon from E onwards). The importance of Forcellini lies also in his bibliographical notes and his numerous multilingual translations (into French, German, English, Spanish or Italian). This means that the Lexicon can be searched via these translations.

• The Lewis & Short Latin Dictionary

  The 'Lewis and Short' has already been input by CTLO and will be added to DLD in due course.

‘Live Link’ to the Library of Latin Texts Online

The Library of Latin Texts is also searchable online.
Subscribers to both the Library of Latin Texts and the Database of Latin Dictionaries benefit from the ‘Live Links’ between the two publications. This link enables the user who has conducted a search on a word in a dictionary within DLD to export this word automatically to its sister-database and thereby identify actual occurrences of the particular word in CLCLT in its actual context. Likewise, a user can select a word found in a text of CLCLT and automatically find entries on the word in the constituent dictionaries of the DLD.

For more information, please contact us at brepolis@brepols.net